Remember This
by lauren3210
Summary: After being med school sweethearts, Damon and Elena separate in order to go off and conquer the world of medicine. Years later, their paths cross once more. Oneshot for the A2A Christmas exchange.


This is a oneshot, written for the A2A Christmas exchange, for the following prompt:

**elizabeth85cec: **Yay! That time of the year again! Okay, so here's my prompt. I've always loved the idea of Damon and Elena in a hospital setting. I'm thinking they were college sweethearts. Damon moves away to do his internship abroad with the promise to Elena that after the year is up they would resume their relationship, but he never returns. Why? Your choice. Elena is broken hearted after that and they don't see each other again until years later where a medical case brings them together. What kind? Up to you as well. Neither ever has anything serious after each other. In the present, he's a successful surgeon working for a NY hospital (known to be a womanizer) and Elena is brought on board as a medical consultant. Paths are crossed and Damon realizes that he never stopped loving her and wants her back, though he's thrown by Elena's attitude when she acts like she doesn't remember him- which is all an act as she too never stopped loving him. Alone for the holiday's Damon devices a plan to win her and her forgiveness back on the days leading up to Christmas. - This may have been WAY specific, so you can tweak it your way so that it works. Points if there's a Christmas proposal!*!*! I'd prefer something smutty-licious, but PG's good too!

**A/N: **Okay, I think this ended up slightly lighter hearted than you were thinking of, but I did put some smut in there, so hopefully it balances out, and I hope you enjoy it!

**A/N 2: **You should all be over the age of 18 reading this, but the parent in me wants to point something out: there is unprotected sex in this fic, DON'T DO THAT, KIDS! Ahem, carry on, Happy Holidays everyone!

* * *

><p>"How are there so many people here? It's 5 o'clock in the morning for God's sake!"<p>

"Um, because they're all getting ready to board a flight maybe? Just like you are?"

Damon grumbled around the last bite of croissant shoved between his teeth as he fumbled through his flight details, looking for his ticket. "You are far too happy in the mornings."

Elena laughed and pulled his ticket out of his jacket pocket and handed it to him. "Only to counteract your grumpiness. If I was in a bad mood every morning with you, I think the world would explode."

"True, your temper is fairly epic." He winced, and then grinned at her efforts to punch him again, dodging her arm and pulling her in close. "Who's going to force me to be happy in the mornings for the next year?" He mumbled into her long dark hair, pulled back into a perfect ponytail even at this ungodly hour.

"I'm sure you'll find someone willing to put up with your mood swings." Elena laughed lightly and shoved at him, but he could see the tension around her eyes. "Although, you are incredibly grumpy, so maybe not."

That had been their deal; while he was in England completing his internship and she went to Boston for hers, they wouldn't be a couple anymore. They'd discussed it at length over the last few months, ever since the realisation hit them that they wouldn't be leaving med school to go on to the same place. It had been unfathomable at first, the idea of not waking up to Elena's smile every morning, of not arguing with her over what to order for dinner that evening, of not falling into her in the evening, the rest of the world ceasing to exist beyond the tangled sheets and their breaths and moans as they showed how much they loved each other through touches and whispers, quiet words and gasps of coming undone together.

But in the end, Elena had been adamant, and Damon had to admit that it made a certain sense. They were going to be thousands of miles from each other, and it wasn't just going to be a holiday. It was going to be hard and stressful, and really lonely so far away from everything that they knew. Neither of them needed the extra added weight of remaining faithful to one person they wouldn't be seeing for 12 months. So they'd agreed in the end, to both go out into their respective parts of the world, free and unattached, and then when he was back, they'd come back together.

And now they had only a few minutes left together, before Damon had to walk through security and away from the only girl he thinks he will ever be able to love.

"And what about you?" He asked now, letting his lips skim over her temple, trying to memorise and catalogue everything about her that made her _his _Elena. "You're going to have to find someone who won't care that you take your coffee so weak it might as well just be milk. People like that are hard to find, you know."

"Yeah, yeah, you're one in a million, Salvatore."

"Right back at you, Gilbert." He flicked his tongue along her ear and leaned in closer. "When I get back, I'm going to ask you to marry me. On Christmas Day."

She laughed lightly. "Telling me when you're going to do it takes away most of the surprise, I hope you know."

He shrugged lightly. "I'll find a way to make it work."

She sighed against him, her warm breath tickling his neck. "I'm sure you will."

The announcement for his flight came over the speakers, and they both winced and instinctively held onto each other tighter.

"I don't want to go," Damon whispered into her hair.

"I don't want you to go," Elena whispered back. And then she stood up straight, her palms pressed against his chest, pushing him backwards towards the gate. "No, I'm being selfish. I want to to go." One step. "I want you to learn amazing medical things." Another step. "I want you to have a fantastic time and not think about me." Two more steps. "And then I want you to come find me and tell me all about it." One final step, and his back pressed against the check in desk.

He pulled her against him one last time, sliding the perfect way her body fit against his into his memory. "Learn amazing medical things, check. Come back and tell you all about it, check." He cupped her face with both hands and leaned his forehead down to rest against hers. "But don't think for a second that I won't be thinking about you." He pulled her in for a kiss, his tongue memorising the sweet taste of her, the little sounds she made as he bit lightly on her lower lip and soothed it away with a sweep of his tongue, the way her hips swayed into his to keep as much of her body pressed against his as possible.

It was minutes, hours, days, before the check in clerk finally cleared his throat and they were forced to draw apart. He handed his ticket over without taking his eyes from hers. He walked backwards through the gate, watching as she leaned over the desk as though she could come with him if only the gate wasn't in her way.

_I love you, _he mouthed as he reached the corner, smiled as she whispered it back to him. He took one last long, searching look, until his eyes started to sting and he had to blink the moisture away. When he looked up again, she was gone.

* * *

><p>"Karl, what is this?"<p>

The man sitting behind the desk barely flicked his eyes up before continuing with his work. "It looks like an email print out to me. Do you need me to make you an appointment doen in Ophthalmology?"

Elena Gilbert sat down opposite her Chief of Surgery and rolled her eyes. "Don't be sarcastic, I haven't had my coffee yet this morning so I might accidentally-on-purpose kick you in the shin."

"In a bit of a rush to get to work this morning, were we?"

"No. I spilt it when I found _this _waiting for me when I got here." Elena waved the piece of paper at her mentor again, restraining herself from yet another eye roll as he sighed and placed his pen down with exaggerated weariness.

"What is it?"

"It's a consult. Another one. For a hospital in New York." Elena shook the piece of paper more forcefully after getting nothing more in response than a questioning eyebrow. "We've discussed this, Karl. I don't want to be sourced out any more."

"Because you have such a scintillating social life here that you can't possibly miss?"

Elena gritted her teeth. "I don't have much time for any kind of social life if I'm constantly out of town, do I?"

"Right, because _that's _the reason you spend all of your down time here at the hospital." He smirked at her look of shock. "Elena, I'm the Chief of surgery, no matter what you bribe the rest of the staff with, I still get to know everything that goes on around here."

Elena sighed and tugged on her hair in frustration. "My work is important to me," she said lamely.

"Exactly, which is why I won't be stopping other hospitals asking for your input until something else becomes more important to you." He raised both eyebrows. "That was a threat, Elena. Find a life outside this hospital or you'll be flying all over the country on summons forever."

Elena huffed and looked down at the print out still clenched in her fist. It only had the sparsest details; Presbyterian Hospital needed her to consult on an in vitro VSD correction surgery. It didn't even have the attending surgeon's name. "Is it urgent?" She asked finally, "Or do I at least have time to go home and pack?"

In answer, Karl pointed through the door to where his secretary sat. "Sheila has all your flight details ready."

"Nice to know you were waiting on my permission."

Karl grinned, suddenly looking much younger than his 55 years. "I don't need to ask permission, Gilbert. You're a hot commodity and you belong to me."

Elena huffed a laugh and stood up. "I do not, you chauvinist pig."

"The amount of time you spend in my hospital says otherwise!" He called at her retreating back, and she resisted the urge to stick her middle finger up at him.

She gave Sheila a rueful smile as she collected the patient file and flight details and shoved them into her shoulder bag. Maybe she could get that cup of coffee on her way back to her apartment.

* * *

><p>"Quick, hide me!"<p>

Damon grabbed onto Ric's arm and pulled him to stand in front of the closet door, before slipping through it and holding it shut. Seconds later, his friend knocked lazily on the wood to give him the all clear.

"She's gone, whichever one it was."

Damon pulled the door back open cautiously and eyed the backs of the 3 nurses as they turned down another hallway. He shrugged and stepped out into the hall in relief. "Honestly, it could have been any of them."

Ric sighed and leaned against the wall. "What did you do now?"

"Celebrated the end of a fifteen hour surgery with some well deserved no-strings-attached sex?"

"And did the girl in question know that there were no strings?"

Damon adopted his best innocent look. "I'm not sure. It was pretty hard to hear her response with her thighs wrapped around my head."

Ric pulled a face. "You're disgusting."

"I'm almost certain that's not what she said."

"Until she woke up to find you'd run away."

"I didn't run away! It's called beating a strategic retreat." Damon grinned and began walking to his friend's office, smiling as Ric fell into step beside him. "So, did you send in that consult request for my patient?"

"I did." Ric unlocked his door and stepped inside, and suddenly Damon was suspicious of the way he wouldn't meet his eye.

"You asked for Connors over in Seattle, yes?" Ric said nothing, just sat down in the chair behind his desk and braced his chin on his hands. "Ric, tell me you didn't ask for _her._" Still Ric didn't respond, and Damon felt his wariness give into rage. "Jesus fuck, Ric! I asked you for one thing, _one thing_, and you go and do this?"

"She's the best in this field, Damon. I did what was best for the patient." Ric's words were quiet but determined. Damon wanted to throw something. "Besides, you've asked me for lots of things."

Damon shot him a glare. "You know what I mean. This was the one thing that was actually important to me." He sighed and sank down in the seat opposite, hands covering his face. "Is she coming?" He peeked through his fingers to see Ric nod once. "Does she know it's for me?"

Ric shook his head. "I can assign someone else, if you don't want to be involved."

Damon thought about it for a moment. It was a big hospital; he could avoid her for the few days that she would be here if he had to. Then he shook his head. "Sarah and Paul have been with me since the beginning, and she's nervous enough. A change in surgeon would only make it worse for her." He sighed and dropped his hands. "When does she get here?"

"I'm scheduled to meet her at 9 tomorrow morning."

Damon closed his eyes. "Christ. And here I thought Christmas was going to be good this year."

Ric laughed. "Every Christmas you get drunk and hide out in your apartment. I don't think it could get much worse."

Damon scowled. "You haven't met Elena."

Ric just grinned unrepentantly. "I've a feeling I'm going to like her."

Damon groaned.

* * *

><p>New York Presbyterian Hospital looked just like all the other hospitals Elena had consulted for over the past few years, so she really had no idea why she was so nervous this time. Maybe it was the way their Chief of surgery, Dr Alaric Saltzman, had looked at her when she first entered the room; as though he was expecting more from her than just her medical abilities.<p>

They'd exchanged pleasantries as they sat in his office, and she was now looking through the full case file. She had only been given the highlights to read on the plane ride from Boston to New York; confidentiality had restricted her access to anything other than her particular patient until her arrival. Now she had the full report, complete with medical histories of both the mother and father, and the name of their resident attending surgeon.

A Dr D. Salvatore. With whom she'd be working closely for the next few days. In an operating room, a small space that she wouldn't be able to walk away from should she get the urge to either start crying or trying to stab him in the face with a scalpel. She really wasn't sure which one it would be.

"Everything okay, Dr Gilbert?"

She tore her eyes away from the page in front of her and looked up, forcing a smile. She was sure it looked more like a grimace. "Yes, absolutely. And please, call me Elena."

The man smiled back at her and nodded. "And call me Ric, please." He spread his hands wide. "Would you like to meet the patient, have a look yourself and see what we're dealing with?"

Elena felt her smile turn into a softer, more real version. "That would be great. Would you care to escort me?"

He held out his arm to her and she took it, taking the walk down to work out how she was going to play this long overdue reunion. Maybe she'd stab him in the face with her heel.

* * *

><p>Damon was certain that he had been able to tell the moment she stepped foot inside his hospital. His skin thrummed with a nervous energy, and he'd been so preoccupied with wondering where she was right that minute that he hadn't managed to avoid Lyla, the nurse he'd hooked up with and then ran out on a few days ago, as she'd pinned him to the nurse's station and demanded to know what the hell he was playing at. He was still trying to get rid of her when the hairs on the back of his neck suddenly stood up on end, and he turned to watch Ric walk through the double doors, with none other than Elena Gilbert on his arm.<p>

She looked exactly the same as when he'd last seen her; her hair was loose around her shoulders, still long and lustrous, shining with vitality under the harsh glare of the hospital lights. Her smile was polite and interested in her surroundings, her eyes taking in her temporary work environment with gentle enthusiasm. A spike of want went through him so strong he almost groaned aloud. And then her eyes caught his.

And then slid away again, taking in Lyla still pressed against him, then the clock on the wall, the patient charts, and finally landed on the door to his patient's room. Ric raised his eyebrows at him over her head, but she was already walking towards the door, pulling it open and stepping inside.

Distracted, he pushed Lyla off of him without looking at her, ignoring her indignant exclamation as he hesitantly walked over to the doorway. Did she not recognise him? Did she even know they would be working together? Or did she know and truly not give a fuck about him any more?"

Inside the room, Elena was already seated by the bed, talking to Sarah and Paul Lewis, introducing herself. He sidled in, giving Paul a small smile as he looked up.

"So, you're going to operate on my baby, while she's still inside?"

Elena smiled at Sarah, and Damon remembered that smile; calm and reassuring, warm and soft, giving the person on the receiving end the feeling as though they were sliding into a hot bath.

"That's the idea. I'll do some more scans before we decide anything, but from what I've seen so far, it looks like the best option for both you and your baby."

"And you've done this before?" Paul asked, hovering by his wife, holding tight to her hand.

Elena nodded. "Many times. It's why I was brought in; I invented and specialised the treatment myself. There are other surgeons who can do the procedure, but your doctor," she looked down at the notes in her hand, "Dr Salvatore, he wanted to make sure you had the best." She smiled again, but it wasn't a bragging sort of expression, just quietly confident. "I'll leave you to get some rest now, I need to look over your files and talk with your doctors a bit more before we make any plans. I'll be back later to discuss everything with you more." She stood up and squeezed the patient's hand. "It was nice meeting you Sarah, Paul."

She walked out of the room, brushing past Damon and going over to the nurse's station. She didn't look back. Damon walked up behind her, completely wrong footed and a bit lost for words. This never happened to him.

After a few minutes of watching her flick through the patient files, he reached out and tentatively laid his hand on her shoulder. She turned at the contact, stepping back. He let his arm fall back to his side.

"Can I help you?"

She had that same polite smile on her face, and her eyes showed no recognition. Damon didn't know what to do. "Elena it's me," he said, hearing the desperation in his voice but unable to do anything about it. "It's Damon. Damon Salvatore."

A small frown appeared between her delicate eyebrows, and then her eyes widened slightly as a small blush appeared on her cheeks. "Oh!" She giggled lightly. "I thought the name sounded familiar!" She looked him up and down quickly. "How are you?"

It didn't sound to Damon as though she was actually interested in the answer. "I'm- I've been good. How about you?"

It was a stupid, inane, conversation, and Damon knew it, but he couldn't work out what else to say. But apparently Elena felt the same way because she merely continued to smile that polite smile as she nodded.

"Yes, I've been good too. Listen, I really need to go and find your radiologist to talk about getting some new scans before I can decide what needs to be done. How about we all meet up later to discuss how we're going to go about this?" She looked over at Ric, who nodded. "Excellent. I would suggest that we find some time to catch up but," she leaned closer to him, and his breath caught in his throat, "I think your attention is needed elsewhere." She smiled at his blank look and inclined her head to the left, indicating the corner where Lyla currently stood, with Marie and Susan, all three of them glaring daggers at him. Well, shit. Elena stepped back and glanced at Ric. "Shall we meet back up in your office in a few hours?"

Ric nodded again and Elena smiled, grabbing the files and walking off down the corridor.

"She didn't even remember me. Did you see that?" Damon grabbed Ric's arm and shook him. "How could she have forgotten me?"

Ric shrugged. "Maybe you're not as memorable as you like to think. A little too vanilla in the sack in the old days maybe?"

"Oh, fuck you."

Ric laughed and wandered off down the hall, leaving Damon alone. He almost sagged back against the desk, but suddenly felt Lyla's gaze digging into his neck. He bolted down the hall and shut himself in the first available on call room, leaning back against the door with a deep sigh.

It wasn't bad enough that just the sight of her brought back memories from all those years ago, that standing close to her had told him that she still used that apple shampoo she used to like so much, that the swing of her hips as she walked away reminded him of how she'd looked the last time he had laid eyes on her. No, she also had to forget everything about him, leaving him tangled in emotions he had promised himself he would never let himself feel again while she stood there not even thinking about him at all. He groaned and thunked his head back against the door.

God, he was so _fucked._

* * *

><p>Elena managed to keep her composure until after she turned the corner, before breaking out into a run for the first bathroom she came across. She slammed her way in, thankful to find it empty, and splashed herself with cold water. Then she leaned her forehead against the bathroom mirror and tried to control her breathing.<p>

She still hadn't formulated a plan for how she would act around him by the time she had come across him in the hallway. The sight of him, after all those years, with another woman plastered against his front, took away all of the possible things she had been thinking of to say, leaving her mind totally blank. So she did the only thing she could; ignored him, and then pretended she hadn't recognised him. Which was ridiculous, because how could she possibly forget those blue eyes, that thick dark hair, the way those lips would quirk up at the corners in just the right way to turn her knees into jelly. She'd dreamed about him constantly since the day he'd got on that stupid plane, memorised every detail of him down to the last eyebrow waggle. She couldn't forget about him even if she tried, and she had, repeatedly.

She scowled at her reflection and closed her eyes. And now she had to work with him, and continue pretending that she could barely even remember his name, despite the fact that it was still the only word on her lips when she slipped her hand below her sheets in the deep black of night.

This entire consult was going to be a nightmare.

* * *

><p>The new scans had been done, and the intricacies of the surgery had been hashed out. Damon would be in charge of Sarah Lewis, repairing the hole in her heart. Previously undiagnosed, the strain of pregnancy had caused the hole to tear wider. Oxygenated blood was leaking steadily from one ventricle to the other, mixing with the deoxygenated blood and forcing the heart to work harder than usual, and the further along her pregnancy progressed, the more the chances grew for heart failure occurring. She had also managed to pass on this condition to her unborn child, whose ventricular septal defect was so large her obstetrician had been concerned for the child's ability to survive labour and birth. In order to survive labour herself, Sarah needed her VSD operated on, and so rather than subject her and her baby to more than one bout of general anaesthesia, it had been decided that Elena would operate on the foetus in vitro, at the same time as Damon operated on Sarah.<p>

"Are you sure we have to do this?" Paul asked, smoothing his wife's hair in an effort to calm them both.

Elena nodded. "The scans are very clear. Your baby has two large outlet VSDs; those are holes in the ventricle where the blood leaves the heart. They're too big to close on their own, so she would need surgery as soon as she was born anyway. She's already smaller than your OB is happy with, because too much of her energy is being expended on keeping her heart pumping for her to get enough nutrition. She has an arrhythmia - irregular heartbeat - suggesting that her heart is having difficulty keeping itself going. We are worried that the stress of labour would cause her heart to fail, and if that was to happen, we are not sure that we could get to her in time." She held Sarah's hand again, stroking a thumb across her knuckles soothingly. "We really think our best chance is if I go in and try to repair the holes while Dr Salvatore does the same to you."

Sarah and Paul looked at each other, and then slowly nodded. They were on. The procedure would start the next afternoon. Christmas Eve.

Outside the room, Ric turned to Elena and smiled. "You fancy a job here? We need a neonatal specialist."

Elena shook her head. "Thanks for the offer, but I'm happy where I am at Mayo."

"Well, if you change your mind, the job's waiting for you. All you have to do is say."

Elena walked off shaking her head and smiling, and Damon watched her go.

* * *

><p>Damon watched from the private viewing gallery as Elena began the procedure. He had been there as Sarah had been put under anaesthesia, but he had left the OR soon after Elena had started positioning her laparoscopic utensils. Operating on the baby would take a lot longer than Damon's job of repairing Sarah's own heart, so Ric had proposed that Elena do as much of her work as possible alone, so that she could concentrate better. Damon wasn't sure what to do about the fact that Elena had practically jumped at the chance to be in an OR without him for as long as possible. He also didn't know what to do with the fact that it seemed she could barely be in the same room with him for very long before finding something urgent she needed to attend to elsewhere.<p>

It may have been 5 years since he had seen Elena in the flesh, but that didn't mean that he hadn't kept an ear out on her progress in the medical profession. He'd devoured every article that had even mentioned her in passing. He'd even managed to obtain a copy of a video taken of her first attempt at the surgery she was currently performing on the floor below him, watching it over and over. The video had become slightly fuzzy from the amount of times he had paused it at the moment she removed her mask, her blinding smile taking his breath away every single time. He'd kept his promise from the airport; he'd never stopped thinking about her.

Watching her now, scrubbed and gloved, her hair hidden behind her lucky scrub cap, a line between her sculpted brows as she poured all of her concentration into the screen in front of her, he thought she'd never looked more beautiful. And all of a sudden, all those reasons that had filled his head over the past 5 years for why he shouldn't go after her no longer made any sense. Of _course _he should, because she was always the only girl he had ever loved, and all this time without her had done nothing but prove that to him over and over again.

So he watched, and he waited, and he decided that he was going to force her to remember him properly and then remind her of just what they had once had together. And then he would prove to her that they could have that again.

And what better place to do all that than in a room from where she couldn't easily escape?

* * *

><p>The door swished open behind her, and Elena felt her teeth clench together automatically. She was suddenly very glad that most of her face was hidden behind a scrub mask, because she wasn't at all certain that she could keep her professional demeanor up in front of Damon for so long without it. Every moment spent in his presence made her skin tingle and her palms itching to reach out and touch him, to see if his hair was as soft as she remembered, if the feel of his skin against hers still felt like electricity running through her. She had to keep closing her hands into fists and concentrating on her breathing just to keep herself still.<p>

"How's everything going, Dr Gilbert?"

His voice slid over her shoulder as he leaned over her. She knew it would look to the rest of the scrub team as though he was only checking the screen to see her progress, but she could feel the long line of heat from his body through her gown and scrubs, could imagine the feel of his breath on her neck even as his mask kept it from reaching her. She forced back against an urge to shiver and lean back into him and gripped the wands in her hand more tightly.

"Everything's looking good so far, are you ready to begin?"

"I am. Do you mind if I have some music playing?"

Elena bit down on her lip, but she supposed she couldn't refuse; she was a guest in his OR. She settled for shrugging her shoulders and staring down onto her screen in answer. Moments later, the first few notes of a song started playing, and her shoulders tensed up.

"Oh God, this compilation again?" Their anaesthesiologist groaned, hanging his head back in his chair. Elena wondered how often this particular song was played.

Damon caught her eye from the other side of the table, and she was sure he was smirking behind his mask as he accepted the scalpel being handed to him.

"I thought it might put Dr Gilbert at ease while she's here with us," he said, beginning his cut, head nodding along to the music. "Did she tell you that we were at med school together?"

"No." Geoff lifted his head and looked at Elena. "What was that like, being at school with an idiot like this?"

"Hey!"

"Probably about as much fun as being trapped in a room with him for upwards of 8 hours."

"Hey!" Damon protested again, and Geoff snickered.

Elena was glad when Damon bent his head and settled into work for a moment, unwilling to share any more stories from their past. All too soon though, the music changed to yet another familiar song, and Elena felt her entire body tense up from the memories it brought up.

"This was playing on the radio the day we got our results, do you remember?"

"I don't think I was paying that much attention to the radio that day." It was a complete lie, she remembered everything in minute detail; the way they'd woken up spooned together in bed, opening their results as they lay together in the tangled sheets, the way his tongue had trailed a victory path up her thighs to her centre, curling his tongue inside her until he brought her to a congratulatory orgasm.

Silence came down in the room again, the only sounds the gentle clicking of metal instruments, and the soft strains of the music piping into the room.

Elena was almost finished when another familiar song came on. Her hands shook minutely as memories swept over her, and she was suddenly so angry that she wanted to reach over and strangle him. He had definitely done this on purpose, and she couldn't work out why. She'd heard the whispers throughout the hospital during her few days here, he had a reputation amongst the female staff. Was he just tormenting her? Reminding her of what they had just to point out that what he had now was so much better?

"Elena, you must remember this song."

"I don't think I do." She refused to look up, putting all of her concentration into removing the wands, watching the screen for any signs of tearing or shadows that would indicate she'd been unsuccessful. Nothing happened, and the foetal monitor remained the same as it had all through the operation. She breathed a long sigh of relief.

"Oh come on, it was playing in the bar on campus, just after midnight, Christmas morning." Damon talked on, close to finishing himself. He removed the clamps and nodded when the vitals all remained stable. "I tried to kiss you-"

"And I told you that if you so much as spoke to me again, I would kick you in the balls."

Her voice rang out through the room, and Elena realised she had shouted. Flushing, she turned to the scrub nurse she had been working with. "Thank you, Mark. I'm all finished here, it was a pleasure to work with all of you."

"No, Elena, wait!"

She turned and stalked out of the OR without turning back, stripping off her gown and gloves and throwing them in the waste. She scrubbed her hands again as fast as she could and then stormed out into the hallway, ripping off her scrub cap and pulling her hair out of its tight bun. She didn't know what game he was playing, but she was tired of it. She wanted to go home.

* * *

><p>Damon watched Elena storm out of the room, frustrated that she'd reacted the way she had. He'd only been trying to remind her of the times they'd shared together, they'd been great moments. It was a compilation of songs that he'd listened to many times in this room while he worked, and every song on the list reminded him of her in one way or another. He'd just wanted to show her how long he'd been thinking about her.<p>

He turned to his resident, who had been shadowing his left shoulder since he'd started the procedure. "Richards, close up for me." The woman spluttered in shock; it was the first time he had let anyone else touch one of his patients during surgery. He rolled his eyes. "Come on, it's not like you don't know how to do it. Get up here." He replaced his hands with hers and then stepped away from the table. "Call me if you have any problems." He stripped off his gown and gloves before turning back to her. "Oh and Richards? Don't have any problems."

"No, sir."

Damon nodded and ran out into the scrub room, rushing through his washing and pulling off his cap and mask, hoping Elena wouldn't have had time to get very far.

He slammed out into the hall and breathed a huge sigh of relief when he saw her a little further down, leaning against the wall with her hands on her knees. She'd let her hair down, and it now fell in a long curtain in front of her face. She lifted her head at the sound of the door slamming behind him, and turned to face him. She glared and then turned away, standing up and walking down the hall, away from the ORs.

"Elena! Goddammit, would you please wait and let me explain?"

"Explain what?" She whirled on him just as he reached her, out in the OR reception. Everyone in the vicinity raised their heads at her loud voice, but it didn't look as though Elena cared very much. "You want to explain why you thought it necessary to humiliate me in front of your entire OR staff?" She snorted elegantly. "Very professional, Damon, really. Although what else should I have expected from the hospital's manwhore?"

Several people snickered at that, and Damon saw Lyla leaning by the desk, laughing openly. He grabbed Elena by the elbow and steered her off down the corridor, shoving her into the first available on call room he came across.

"I wasn't trying to humiliate you, I just-"

"Well you could have fooled me, Damon!" Bright spots had appeared high on her cheeks, and her brown eyes were blazing with fury. "Playing the song we first danced to? The song from when we first met? The one from the first night in our apartment together? What the fuck else was that supposed to be?"

"I was trying to get you to remember!"

She had been pacing the length of the room as she ranted, but now she stopped dead and looked at him. "If you really believe I ever forgot a thing that we shared together, then you obviously never knew me very well at all."

"Right back at you, Gilbert."

Maybe it was the phrase he'd used, or the use of her surname, just as he used to when they were teasing each other, he didn't know, but suddenly her eyes filled with tears.

"But you did forget! 6 years, Damon! You left me 6 years ago, with a promise that you would come back, and I never saw you again!" She pulled a hand hard through her hair and then pointed a shaking finger at him. "I didn't even know you were back in the country! I had to hear it from your _mother! _I _hate _your mother!"

"Everybody hates my mother."

"And I find out that not only were you back in the country, but that you'd been back for 6 months! And in all that time you couldn't even be bothered to come and find me, even to tell me that it was over!"

"I did come to find you!"

Elena stopped moving, her back straightening and her eyes widening. "What?!"

Damon sighed and leaned back against the locked door, looking down at the floor. "I came back home, and the first thing I did was drive out to see you. You and Caroline were having a party, it was Halloween. And I walked in, and you were- you were kissing someone else." He closed his eyes and let his head hit the door behind him. "And you just, you looked so happy, like you hadn't spent every moment while I was away missing me the way I had missed you. And I just thought, maybe you'd be better off if I never came back." He shrugged. "So I left."

The room was silent for a full minute, until Damon finally got up the courage to open his eyes and look at her. She looked like she was struggling to make up her mind as to whether she wanted to shout at him some more or just punch him in the face.

"Are you fucking kidding me." Her voice was flat, a slight tone of condescension ringing behind the words. She took a step closer, her small fists opening and closing down by her sides. "Are you telling me that after a year of being halfway across the world, you decide to throw everything we had together away just because of one accidental kiss?"

Her voice had risen, but all Damon could focus on was one word. "Accidental?"

She blew out an annoyed breath and stepped even closer. "That guy was Tyler, remember him? Caroline's boyfriend? The one she's been married to for the past 3 years! He was so blind drunk he couldn't see straight, and immediately afterwards Caroline threw him into the pool!" She stepped closer and smacked him, hard, in the chest. "Are you telling me that you walked away from me, from _us_, all because of the one kiss I had with _anyone _for 18 months, and it was a drunken kiss from Tyler fucking Lockwood?"

Damon wanted to respond and defend himself, but he was stuck on her last statement. "You mean you didn't... with anyone, the whole time I was away?"

Elena almost screamed, and stamped her foot, narrowly missing his own. "Of course I didn't, you idiot, I was waiting for _you!"_

Damon's heart was in his throat, he was having trouble swallowing, and he thought there was a distinct possibility that he would pass out any time soon, but he could also feel a small bubble of hope rising in his chest. "And, since then? Have you...?"

Elena shook her head. "No. I mean, I haven't been celibate but, I guess I've just been waiting for the right guy to come along."

Damon almost, _almost_ grinned. "I'm the same. To all of it."

"You've been waiting for the right guy?"

"To be fair, Ric _almost_ made the cut."

"What was wrong with him?"

"He's far too grumpy in the mornings. And he drinks his coffee black."

Elena laughed, and then covered her face with her hands. "Jesus Christ, you're an idiot."

Damon realised it was now or never. He reached out and pulled her hands away from her face, pulling her in closer. "I'm an idiot who has been in love with you for 9 years. I don't want to wait any more." And then he leaned down and kissed her.

She tasted better than he remembered, sweetness with a hint of mint from the gum she was forever chewing. Her lips opened under his with a soft moan and he swallowed the sound, biting down on her lower lip and then smoothing the sting away with his tongue before tentatively meeting with her own. She pulled her wrists out of his grasp and slid her hands up his back, pulling him closer, and he deepened the kiss, his fingers tangling in her long dark hair, still just as thick and soft as it had always been.

Soft moans quickly turned into desperate groans, fingers grabbing and pulling closer. Unable to tear his mouth away from hers for even a second, he began to blindly walk her backwards to the bed in the corner of the room. Elena's hands slipped under his scrub top, pulling the long sleeved shirt he wore beneath it from the waistband of his pants and they both moaned at the touch of skin on skin. Her touch was electrifying, and Damon didn't understand how he hadn't gone mad, living without this for the past 6 years. They tumbled onto the bed together, their legs tangling as Elena pulled at his shirts and he fumbled with the drawstring of her scrub pants.

Elena pulled his shirts up over his head and he moaned at the loss of her lips, his breath stuttering to a halt as she wriggled beneath him pulling her own top off and revealing her tanned skin beneath. Damon bent his head and touched his tongue to her navel, sliding his hands up her sides until he reached the front clasp of her bra. Elena gasped and writhed beneath him as he kissed down her arms as he slipped the straps down, arching her back beautifully into him as his lips closed around a taut, dusty pink nipple. He was so hard he could cut glass, and he gasped as her fingers slid into the waistband of his pants and tugged them down.

They tugged and pulled at each other, rolling and kissing and licking every available patch of skin, until finally they were both naked and panting, her thighs straddling his hips as their lips met once more for a heated, desperate kiss. Damon slid his hand between them, two fingers searching only to find her wet and ready for him, and he groaned as he slid them inside her. Elena rolled her hips and whimpered into his mouth, her hand grabbing at his wrist and pulling him away.

"Foreplay later," she whispered against his lips, "sex now," and she shifted and sank down onto him. His hips bucked and he cried out at the sensations, biting his lip against the sudden urge to finish way too soon. "6 years, Damon," Elena said, rolling her hips again and starting up a rhythm. "I've been waiting for this for 6 fucking years."

It was all Damon could do to hold onto her hips and let her set the pace, lifting up off the bed to capture her lips in another scorching kiss. "I know, I'm sorry."

He didn't know how long they moved together, it could have been minutes, hours, days, years, but eventually he felt her clench around him, her breaths coming harsher as she panted against his lips. With his name on her tongue she came hard, her hips still moving above him, and he felt the answering pull in his groin seconds before he spilled himself inside her. Together, they fell into a sweaty heap on top of the bed, each not yet ready to let the other go, their hands sliding across every piece of skin they could reach, their tongues still reacquainting themselves with their mouths.

After a while, all the stress, anger and need pulled Elena into sleep, and she tucked her head into Damon's shoulder as she fell into dreams. Damon held her for a long time after, unable to believe he finally got to have this, to have _her_.

The clock chimed midnight on the wall, and suddenly, he remembered something; another promise he had made to her. He carefully slipped out of the bed and pulled his clothes back on, sliding out of the door quietly so as not to wake her.

He had a promise he needed to fill.

* * *

><p>The pillow was scratchy beneath her cheek, and Elena had spent enough nights in hospitals to know she was in an on call room. She stretched and rolled over, her eyes blinking open as she remembered what had happened just before she fell asleep. She moved her hand across the bed, sitting up when she encountered nothing but cold sheets. She blinked around at the room, seeing her clothes scattered across the floor, but no sign of Damon.<p>

Elena felt sick. She'd heard the rumours around the hospital, that he'd take a woman to bed only for her to wake up alone afterwards. She had been stupid to think she was anything different, even after all he had said to her. She pulled the sheets tighter around herself and held on tight, as though that alone would keep her heart from breaking. She would just get dressed, go back to her hotel room, finish up with the patient and then fly home as soon as she could, and pretend that none of this had ever happened.

She reached down for her panties just as the door clicked open. Elena froze, grabbing at the sheet to make sure she was fully covered, her eyes widening as Damon stepped back into the room, closing the door behind him.

"Where did you go?"

Damon smiled at her, not a smirk or a leer, but the small genuine smile that she used to think of as just hers. "I had to go get something." He walked back over to the bed, but instead of sitting next to her, he knelt down on the floor.

"What-"

"I told you I'd find a way to make it a surprise." He held his hand out to her, and she noticed it was shaking before she saw the small jewellery box resting in his palm. She gasped. "It's Christmas Day, Elena. Will you marry me?"

"Damon..." She stared from the diamond ring nestled in folds of silk to his face, open and honest and scared. "I live in Boston," she whispered weakly.

"Ric's already offered you a job here. Take it, Elena, please." Damon lifted his other hand to her face, cupping her jaw. "I've wasted 5 years being stupid, and I don't want to waste another second. Marry me."

"Where did you even get the ring?"

Damon shrugged. "I bought it in England before I moved back here. It was in the glove compartment of my car."

Elena looked down at him. "You kept it all this time?"

"I never stopped thinking about you Elena. I never stopped loving you. Not for a single second."

Elena took a deep breath. "I guess we'd better get Ric to draw up a contract then."

Damon's eyebrows rose hopefully. "Is that a yes?"

Elena smiled. "It's a yes. I never stopped loving you, either."

Damon surged up and kissed her hard. Elena slid her hands into his hair and pulled him up and over, bringing him down on top of her on the bed. Damon broke the kiss to stare down at her, that small, private smile gracing his lips once more. He leaned down in to whisper in her ear.

"Best Christmas ever."

Elena couldn't agree more.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **A quick note on the medical stuff in this fic - obviously Elena did not actually invent this procedure, and I should know because my husband has performed it himself a few times. I went with heart issues because he's a cardio thoracic surgeon, so occasionally I accidentally pick stuff up when he's talking at me. I probably got stuff wrong, mainly because I rarely listen when he talks, and also as I'm British, there may be some discrepancies there. So, don't hate me if i got anything majorly wrong - this is all just a bit of fun! Hope you liked it 3


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